mgo.licio.us

"The face of the operation is Briatore (referred to exclusively in the film by his colleagues and angry, chanting detractors as "Flavio"), an anthropomorphic radish who spends most of his time at QPR plotting to fire all of the managers."

At press time, Harbaugh had sent Michigan’s athletic department an envelope containing a heavily annotated seating chart, a list of the 63,000 seat views he had found unsatisfactory, and a glowing 70-page report on section 25, row 12, seat 9, which he claimed is “exactly what the great sport of football is all about.”

I have nothing but the utmost respect for the players who sacrifice their bodies and have to be full-time students as well, with no financial compensation beyond their scholarship. I don't feel nearly as sorry for the grown men who are paid extremely well to coach a child's game, especially when the results are extremely poor. I will grant the offensive coaches a pass because of the circumstances, but I won't be as charitable on the D. I don't believe that our defensive staff is the optimal one for this program, so why should I blindly support them? If the posts above are correct, the players are drawing the same conclusions.

Last year's D wasn't great, but it was respectable. It gave up 21.4 points per game against a pretty tough schedule. (I don't consider giving up 35 points to Florida and Tebow to be that bad.) This year's D, with much more experience, is giving up 30.9 ppg. Next year we'll lose basically all of our good defensive players. Anyone who sees us improving defensively next year is operating on blind faith.

RichRod is NOT a defensive guy, by his own admission. His DC is by far the most critical of his assistants. Right now the early returns on Shafer are very, very discouraging.

We need to redo the ND contract and put in some breaks in the series, like we had in 1995-96 and 2000-01. Playing them every year is really limiting what we can do with the rest of the schedule, given that seven home games is apparently a financial necessity.

I love Odoms, but calling him "Breaston with hands," I don't quite agree with. Did Breaston ever muff a punt? I remember him regularly getting clocked by opposing gunners while somehow managing to hang on.

But anyway, it's really good to see the special teams giving the offense shorter fields to work with. In many games, our O has had consistently bad field position, which has not done it any favors.

And Minor is clearly coming into his own. He's not just running with authority, he's also showing improved vision and is hitting the correct hole more than he used to.

As for Threet, I think he's gutting it out on a bad arm. He had more zip on the ball earlier.

Does it really benefit a weak offense to play passively on D and repeatedly concede first-down yardage, even if it doesn't give up huge plays? One could argue that a weak offense really would benefit from a defense that is designed to make big plays itself and force turnovers and 3 and outs, to give the offense better field position to work with. As it is, we force very few 3 and outs, and when we do manage to force a punt, we're regularly backed up very deep in our own territory. We also force very few turnovers (especially interceptions).

Regardless of whether it makes sense in theory, in actual games our defensive schemes result in our opponents repeatedly going on long, clock-eating drives that regularly end in points (or else short drives that also end in points), and opposing QBs consistently having career days. Anyone think the Purdue kid will perform anywhere near that level the rest of the season?

Last year the defense was lousy, gave up the 2nd most points (1 point short of 2004) in Michigan history, but was bailed out by an NFL laden offense.

Don't look at total points surrendered. The 13-game schedule has only been in place for a couple of years, so that skews the data. Last year's D gave up 21.4 points per game, which is respectable for a young unit that faced a pretty difficult schedule. Several of Carr's teams surrendered more ppg, as did Gary Moeller's final team.

This year, with far more experience than we had a year ago, we are surrendering 30.9 ppg, by far the worst in school history. And even that hideous average is kept down by our two MAC opponents. Take them away and everyone else is scoring 37 ppg against us. You cannot tell me that you "saw this coming." We have the Big Ten's worst defense right now. I don't remember anyone stating before the year that the D would be anything but a strength.

Are you really going to argue that the loss of Crable, Englemon and Adams was THIS crippling that it outweighed the gains that should have been made from having everyone else back a year older?

Much like the offense this year, the defensive unit next season has to lean on either freshmen or first time contributers on the field. Unlike, their counterparts on O this year, however, this can be looked at as a positive.

Wishful thinking. Next year we're going to miss our DL bigtime. Martin's a stud, but he's going to be double-teamed all year.

While there is reason to believe that the offense will get better in the coming years, anyone who believes the D will dramatically improve is acting on blind faith. We won't be this experienced again on D for a few years, and this defensive coaching staff hasn't exactly distinguished itself. Next year, without the studs on the DL, could be worse.

Chitown: and the scary thing is, we suck worse this year. We have given up as many rush TDs even though we didn't face Rashard Mendenhall or Oregon's running game, we haven't yet faced Beanie Wells, and we won't get the chance to face Tim Tebow. And the run defense is the supposedly the STRENGTH of this year's D!

that's good. These other 80 DC's - who are they playing ? How good is their offense? Do they have anything better than a rag tag O-line and a QB with half an arm? It's easy to compile good defensive STATISTICS if your D is never on the field. I agree that there is a problem, but a defensive ranking means shit. See: UM 2006.

Given that there are only 120 teams in I-A, it's kind of hard to imagine that two-thirds of them could be fielding defenses that are "never on the field." Anyway, that #81 ranking was actually before the Purdue game. Following that not-so-stellar performance, there probably are even more teams whose defenses are outperforming ours.

But hey, at least we're not dead last in the country. Yippie! Give Shafer a raise!

You know how everyone love to bash the last 11 years of Michigan Safeties? How the best group we had was last year's "not shitty" tandem of Adams and Englemon? Guess who presided over all those 4 and 5 star safeties who sucked?

Bedford's a great coach. Last year we were 8th in the country (!) in pass defense. This year? Uh, not quite as high. Last January, Florida saw firsthand what our DBs could do under his coaching and nabbed Bedford as soon as he became available.

People, enough with the straw man arguments. It's possible to love Michigan football and still be concerned about what you see on Saturdays. Watching us field one of the nation's worst defenses is unreal. I can't accept that Scott Shafer is getting the most out of these guys, especially given that eight of them started on last year's defense which was considerably more competent than this. I think he has lost his guys. I don't see the same kind of fire out there that we had when English was our DC. I want Shafer replaced because I think it's in our program's best interests, not because I'm a "fair-weather fan." (If I were a fair-weather fan, I wouldn't be paying attention to the team by this point.)

Anyway, here's a question I've been meaning to ask of the WLA guys: why is it OK to harshly criticize one of our players (Brandon Minor), but the coaching staff is off-limits? I'm pretty sure Minor isn't getting paid six (or seven) figures to perform every week.

Henning's article is too focused on offense. I don't think there's that much else our staff could have done to improve it, all things considered, other than commit to Threet as our #1 QB before the season started.

But on defense, he can't get a pass - not when a veteran unit deteriorates into the worst D in school history. His decision to hire Shafer is looking extremely suspect. With a DC who could have delivered merely an average Big Ten performance, instead of the conference's worst, we could have pulled out a couple of extra wins, and would still have a shot at a bowl right now.

Uh, how about any of the EIGHTY DCs in I-A who had higher-ranked defenses than Michigan's going into today? (And after today, there might be 90.) I'd gladly take back Ron English, or Corwin Brown, or even promote Hopson (who was DC at Southern Miss) to the job.

Mstier, you act like Shafer is some tenured professor who deserves to keep his job just because he's currently in it. The guy's driven our D off a cliff. This is on pace to be our worst defense in school history - by a mile. And this is with eight returning starters! I can't imagine how ugly it could get next year if Shafer's still around.

Really, does anyone think Shafer commands the same respect among the players that English got?

We returned eight of 11 starters, and all three new starters saw considerable game action last year. The loss of three players does not explain our defense completely dropping off a cliff the way it has. Last year we were eighth in the country in pass defense. This year we've made every QB we face (even a 3rd-stringer on a terrible Purdue team) look like a stud.

Exactly what is it about Shafer that inspires such blind loyalty in people? He never worked with RR before this season. Before this year he had three years of DC experience - at Western Michigan and Stanford. He's never coordinated anything resembling a highly-ranked defense. Only one of the four teams he's coordinated has recorded a winning record. Stanford's D is currently performing much better than it did under Shafer. Michigan, meanwhile, is experiencing its worst defensive season in school history. The evidence strongly suggests that Shafer is not a top-notch DC, regardless of what the "coaching fraternity" thinks about him. (Right now, I'm sure he's REAL popular among the rest of the Big Ten, in the same way that we loved John Cooper.)

Read some of coach Simmons stuff on his web site regarding the defense and Shafer. I still think Shafer deserves more than one year. He had a defensive line to work with, not much in the way of LB's and DB's.

I'm sorry, but Simmons just isn't an objective analyst. He's afraid to criticize coaches for anything. Every call is "great" in his mind.

The clock starts either when the player plays his/her first game or attends his/her first college class, whichever comes first. So for winter or spring sports, the clock starts on the first day of fall classes (assuming the player attends).

Most of these guys are from the over-rated defense that got beat by Appalachian State last year, the left over players from the "feel good" era of Coach Carr.

The D that finished 8th in the country in pass efficiency defense? Last year's D started terribly, but after the first two weeks of the season, it came around and became a pretty solid unit. How it degenerated into the Big Ten's worst defense is something that some folks on the staff have to be held accountable for.

I don't know, but I'm not down on the offense right now. Purdue's D has actually had a pretty good season. They only gave up 20 points to PSU, 9 to OSU (7 came on a punt return) and 17 to Minnesota. (They did get shredded by NW. I don't know what happened there.) For us to score 35 offensive points is pretty good.

I think the offense is definitely making strides, even with Threet being inconsistent and possibly not entirely healthy. Right now I am far more worried about the other side of the ball.

2. When a defense, which had been reasonably competent the year before, returns eight starters and then, despite remaining very healthy, degenerates into one of the worst in I-A (the stats don't lie), it can be reasonably inferred that it is not being properly coached. Players are supposed to improve with experience, not drastically fall off. I think it's safe to say that NO ONE expected this defense to give up 35+ points five times, and 45+ points three times. And there's still three games to go! Given these facts, it's pretty tough to accept that Shafer is the absolute best guy we can find for that position.

Uh . . . yes? The entire D staff is accountable to him. If the positional coaches aren't working enough on tackling (which may be the case, given that all three units are poor at it), he should get on them about it. It's comical how you guys act like Shafer has next to no influence on the play of the defense. If that's the case, then why have a DC in the first place?

All things considered, this game may have been the worst single defensive performance in school history. 2000 Northwestern has generally held that "distinction" up to now, but I'd have to say this was worse. 2000 NW actually was a good team. They also didn't play a 3rd-string, converted RB at QB.

What the hell has this guy ever done as a coach to have earned that kind of a free pass? He's been DC at a crap MAC program for two years, DC at a terrible Pac-10 program for one year, and DC of now-terrible Michigan for one year. He doesn't deserve a long rope. A year ago we seemed halfway competent on D for most of the season. We returned eight starters, and now we're Detroit Lion bad? Shafer was a gamble when we hired him, and it's blowing up in our face.